It’s amazing how the holidays combined with technology issues can throw a schedule out of whack. For example, I have been looking at Candy for days, thinking how badly she needed grooming.

Today was finally the day. We sat her on the grooming table, and she was relatively calm. She did try to pull her paws away from John a few times. Also, she is very afraid of loud noises, and I accidentally knocked the box holding some grooming supplies on the floor; she jumped and tried to scramble off the table. We finally calmed her down enough to continue grooming her.

She had a lot of mats under her hair. The other dogs weren’t that matted, but they don’t lay under the trailer in the dirt and mud like our tomboy shih tzu does. As a result, it took a lot longer than normal to get her in shape. We actually didn’t finish grooming her, although we probably got about three quarters of a way there. She was shaking a little, so we figured we should get her in the sink and get her washed.

She did well in that area too. She is terrified of the blow dryer, and since it took a long time to groom her, we decided to skip the blow dryer and just towel dry her the best we could.

I gave all the dogs some thin slices of Buddig turkey after we finished grooming her. Candy usually hangs back and waits her turn, but either she was very hungry or the grooming had her wound up, because she was acting like Nigel and trying to grab the turkey I was handing to the others. Later, she ran around frantically for a while. We cut her fur very short, so it was probably hard for her to get used to being naked.

I tried to keep her inside to keep her clean for a while, but she slipped out the screen door when I opened it. As I feared, she headed right for the trailer.